Tuesday, October 24, 2017

Study Hints

If you see a word and immediately check it's translation, you'll hardly memorize it at all. If you try your best to recall what the word means before checking the translation, the chances of memorization are much better.

It is much easier to memorize a word's meaning when you know how to pronounce it corretly, so get it right.

Go to Youtube and search for as many videos as possible about how to learn pronunciation on your target language. Don't limit yourself to a couple videos: see as many as you can because sometimes one video will get something wrong, so the other videos will fix it.

Exercise improves your mood and gives you more energy to study. Find something that works for you: pick an exercise routine that doesn't bore you to tears and that you don't mind repeating. Perhaps you'll want to invest on some quality noise-isolating headphones to listen to music or to an audiobook while exercising.

I have a personal theory that simply standing up is an awesome exercise because you are lifting a huge weight of ~70kg while doing it, so I have a standing desk. (~70kg = your bodyweight)

If you want to type some sentences of my books into Google Translate (to see alternative translations, to hear the pronunciation) you might want to learn how to type faster. "Touch typing" is a technique in which you type with all ten fingers of your hand, and when you get good at it you can type as fast as you're reading this sentence. It's a skill that takes little time to master and will be useful all your life. You can learn it by searching "touch typing" on google or visiting the following sites. http://www.keybr.com/ and https://www.typingclub.com/

"Fluent Forever" is the book that made me start this blog in the first place and it's an awesome read as it contains lots of language learning advice.

Thanks. I think that style of deck (with sentences sorted by the frequency of the words in them) is the real deal; it's the method of learning that actually converts effort to fluency, and I can totally imagine big companies like Duolingo and Memrise adopting it in the future.